Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual reality is a result of exponential technological advancements over the past decade. Our capabilities and interconnectedness with technology has created fads like virtual reality and augmented reality. Virtual reality allows an individual to experience and trick their minds to believing they're actually in the picture they're seeing. Virtual reality allows indivdiuals to be who they want, where they want, and the kind of "reality" they want to create for themselves. This is quite exciting for some people and very scary for others. For certain individuals with mental illness, like autism, virtual reality can provide an experience that one may not have been ever to experience themselves first hand.  Nicole Saidi discusses this in her article "'Naughty Aunties' battle autism with virtual interaction" and illustrates how virtual reality allowed children to create an avatar of themselves and participate in activities like real life interaction, communication, and how to handle certain situations. This has proven to be a huge advantage to these children and can potentially change the way they are able to handle their disorder.

Virtual reality has many pros and cons, as well as advocates and opposition. Some of the benefits are that people can use virtual reality, if they have any kind of disability or physical condition that would not allow them to travel, to see every part of the world through their virtual reality lenses. They would be able to experience and create memories of a trip that they were able to take in the comfort of their living room. A huge downside of virtual reality is that someone can use it for the wrong reasons, like the situation Washington Post writer Mike Musgrove describes in his article "At hearing, Real and Virtual Worlds Collide". He shows us that members of the government are concerned about the virtual reality hubs like "Second Life" and how it could fuel illegal activities across the globe.

Virtual reality definitely fosters creativity and allows individuals to experience events and invoke their senses in a way that was never available before.